Occasional wine-geeky and wine-wonky postings from some guy making the stuff in the Sonoma Valley. I also write about other things that interest me.

…And Then There Were None

Compare this picture to my last post. Thirty-two bins of Pinot are pressed off, and I have not brought anything in since the 14th. If you don’t work in a winery you can hardly appreciate how much of a luxury this is, to be able to clear the decks between bringing in waves of fruit.

We had a little rain the morning of the 22nd. The forecast was for a tenth of an inch. We received about a half an inch, and I know a few vineyards up our way that got nearly an inch. This was worrisome—we don’t expect or need a lot of rain midway through September—but didn’t amount to much agitá in the end, as we had a few very dry and windy days after to dry out the fruit before rots could set in.

As luck would have it, we had two crews doing a night pick of the remainder of our Pinot at the Estate for another winery when the rain started to come down hard at 2am. We tarped what we had picked—half of the total job—and the crews went home. The trucker showed up at 5:30am to load. Radar showed that the rain was going to stop around noon, and the winery indicated they were fine with accepting wet fruit. We convinced the crews to come back and pick the rest. They finished about 4pm but the trucker refused to come back to take the second load. (It’s been like this all harvest; I can’t remember ever having to deal with drivers this overworked and surly.) Anyway, the buyer finally found someone who would haul for us, and we got the last load delivered by 8pm. Long day.

Today the weather is perfect: warm, very dry and slightly breezy. It smells and feels like indian summer weather. We are picking Syrah for customers Sunday and Monday, then picking Syrah, Roussanne, and Tannat for ourselves Tuesday and Wednesday. I expect to be long in Syrah just like we were in Pinot, so I will spend the rest of the week looking for buyers.